How Oprah ran out of books     Wednesday, April 10, 2002
The article seems to forget the promise of its subtitle halfway through ("How fiction's best friend ran out of stuff to read"), but Oprah is really just the hook for a short chat about book clubs in general. The article isn't hostile to Oprah, really, although the author isn't a fan of the genre: "The Oprah club is now its own recognizable market brand—and its very titles serve as shorthand for commonly recognized genre conventions: tales of lurid family abuse, tales of the individual struggle of redemption, and—God help us all—tale upon tale of three generations of women absorbing life's hard knocks in a small town."

Exercise in a pill     Wednesday, April 10, 2002
Scientists have used drugs to mimic the effects of exercise in mice. Should this research lead to an exercise pill for humans, the researchers will have enough money to buy the moon and drive it around, beeping its horn. That said, I wouldn’t want to be among the trial run for this particular drug program. A muscle-building pill sounds too much like the origin story for a magnificently mighty and insane race of supervillains. (I am not always saying that.)

Wild bunny bites man     Sunday, March 31, 2002
An Easter story for you. Apparently, the bunny started with the man's ears and worked his way down.

Trail of Sugared Breadcrumbs     Friday, March 29, 2002
Police follow a 15-mile trail of Krispy Kreme doughnuts after thieves zoom off in an idling delivery van. One of the suspects tells police "they had been smoking crack cocaine for several hours before the incident." You don't say.

More monster science     Wednesday, March 27, 2002
A massive black algae bloom appears off Florida. It doesn't appear to be killing fish, although anglers are having less luck. That's because the bloom is rising up and eating them. Okay, no it's not. Not yet.

Frozen trade     Friday, March 22, 2002
On the same day that the U.S. levies a 29 percent tarriff on Canadian softwood lumber, Bush tells a world conference on poverty that "When trade advances, there is no question about the fact that poverty retreats." I think the new U.S. proposal for aid makes a lot of sense and is great news, but the timing of that free trade sound bite is too sweet to ignore.

CBC Parkinson's Cluster?     Friday, March 22, 2002
Was the 1970s CBC sitcom Leo & Me a cluster for Parkinson's disease? Four people involved in the show, including Michael J. Fox, have come down with Parkinson's. The disease can apparently be caused by viral and environmental factors, which was news to me.

Larsen Ice Shelf Collapses     Tuesday, March 19, 2002
It's monster science day here on Planet Earth! The 3,250 square kilometre Larsen ice shelf disintegrates. An asteroid passes 1.2 moon orbits away from Earth. An iceberg the size of nine Singapores is loose at sea. There was also something about a giant lizard near the French Polynesians, but I'm sure that's nothing.

Heroic Measures     Thursday, March 14, 2002
Andrea Spencer of GirlHero taps into the power of the Internet to capture a date for her cousin's wedding. Secret bonus: you get to see Resident Evil. (Are people tiring of movies with kung-fu fights against undead German Shepherds? Didn't A Beautiful Mind have enough of that?) Remember, Central Illinois: Andrea Spencer is a goddamn god. How many of you get to have liquor and sandwiches with gods? Oh, quit name-dropping, Odysseus.

Identifont     Thursday, March 14, 2002
Have you seen a font that you admire, but don't know its name? Identifont will ask you all sorts of questions ("is the J taller than the I?") to narrow down the possibilities. You can restrict the questions to certain letters, in case you only have a word or two. Font Detective! (Huh. As soon as I said that, I thought, there must be a site called that already. Turns out it's a software program. All the good names are taken, I swear.)

Drunk on Power!     Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Great Caesar's Ghost! I don't think a link of mine has spread like this before. I found that $21/gig tax proposal below while researching some copyright law for my technology and culture class. I submitted the story to Slashdot, got rejected, but still wanted to hear some ranting on the subject, so I tried Metafilter. From Metafilter, it has apparently spread to Slashdot, Fark, USS Clueless, dMusic, and others. Oh, Wired's got the story now too. They all link to the same obscure PDF URL that I did, presumably because the Copyright Board still hasn't put out a news release. Some use my Archos calculation too. I don't know why this is so gratifying. Beats writing a letter to my MLA. Screw representative government. I've got a weblog and sometimes I update it! (Haha. Not that Mooselessness actually figures into the chain of event I just listed, but I'm drunk with power, not lucid with power, so don't let's quibble.)

September 11 Memorial at CNN     Monday, March 11, 2002
CNN is hosting a memorial for all the people who died in the September 11 attacks. It's a list of their names, photos and histories. I sorted the list by age. The youngest known victim was two years old, Christine Lee Hanson. The oldest was eighty-five, Robert Grant Norton. Michael Roberts was my age, thirty.
    The New York Times has a more in-depth memorial site that includes profiles, but there was something about sorting the names by age that broke me up.

New Copyright Levy in Canada (PDF)     Sunday, March 10, 2002
Could this kill the iPod in Canada? They're raising the levies that are added to blank media in Canada, and adding a $21.00 per gigabyte tax to nonremovable hard drives in MP3 players (page 7 of the PDF). That's $105 on the iPod. It's $600 to start with. In B.C., taxes and levies will raise that price by a third to $800. And those hard drives won't be getting any smaller.
     The levies are designed to make it legal for us to copy music we don't own, while compensating the artists. I've no idea how well it works.

Towboat and Bridge: a story in photos     Friday, March 8, 2002
An out-of-control towboat hits a bridge that refuses to budge -- but it all works out in the end.

The Birth of Paradroid     Friday, March 8, 2002
A designer's diary for one of my favourite Commodore 64 games, Paradroid. You were some minibot that was capable of possessing larger more dangerous machines, including the fearsome 888, who looked like a Dalek. The game appears to have been completed by one main designer/programmer in four months, a far different creature than today's feature film-sized projects, like WarCraft III. You can download the game Paradroid at the above link too, if you have a C64 emulator!

Dean Kamen lecture (RealVideo)     Friday, March 8, 2002
This Dean Kamen lecture appeared weeks ago on Metafilter, but drew little attention. Kamen is the inventor of the Segway and gives the whole lecture while rocking on a Segway, actually. Kamen says the role of an inventor is to improve the world and that he wouldn't have spent seconds of his life on the Segway if he thought it was destined to be just a scooter. He shakes his head over the parasites of the world (daytraders, Enron) and the culture of nonsense that worships entertainers and ignores scientists. He also introduces his Stirling engine, the highly efficient engine that can run on any heat source, including piles of dung, and whose waste heat energy could be used to purify water in the developing world. Kamen's disappointment and frustration shows through the speech, but I watched the whole hour straight through and left inspired. If I'd seen this speech in Grade Seven, perhaps I'd be a scientist today. Give it five minutes.

Why I am a Bad Correspondent, by Neal Stephenson     Thursday, February 14, 2002
The author of Cryptonomicon explains why he must write either e-mails or novels, but not both. Found on mefi.

WanCatan     Thursday, February 14, 2002
Play Settlers and two of its expansions over the Internet. Yay! The default sounds are ICQ-level annoying, but it's easy to substitute your own. I will trade one sheep for three brick, by the way. You know you need it.

Apple's 1984 commercial     Thursday, February 14, 2002
The making of Apple's famous 1984 SuperBowl commercial. Like everything memorable (hell, like everything), it nearly didn't come to pass. Be sure to read the text of Big Brother's message at the end: "My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State."

Valentine's poems     Thursday, February 14, 2002
A whack of Valentine's poems from Pamie.com. A weenie bit cynical, so be in that mood. There you go. That one.

My So-Called Life on DVD     Wednesday, February 13, 2002
A four-disc set of My So-Called Life is coming. All nineteen episodes: $100 American dollars. And for me, the added cost of a DVD player to play them. This is the second approaching release to make me contemplate getting a player, the first being the Lord of the Rings. At least I have time to make up my mind.

Air travel in the new age     Wednesday, February 6, 2002
I was a little embarrassed to pinch two Boing Boing links in a row, so I started to compose an e-mail instead, addressed to all the people I wanted to share this story with. Then I remember that quelling this friendly spam was exactly the reason I started Mooselessness to begin with. So here it is: 1987 Chevy station wagon versus a Boeing 727. Which wins?

Slow Wave     Wednesday, February 6, 2002
Dreamy cartoons based on people's real dreams. Wonderful. Found on Boing Boing.

MetaPad     Wednesday, February 6, 2002
IBM has squeezed the heart of a computer (which incidentally is the name of my next techno album) into a 3x5 inch case which can be plugged into different set-ups (home desktop, work desktop, laptop, tablet) as need be. Combine this development with short-range ultrawideband and your perhaps your future computer will be a cigarette pack at the bottom of your backpack that makes any computer you approach just like the one at home. Both found on Ars.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, (uh oh), tap...     Thursday, January 31, 2002
Wizards of the Coast is launching an online Magic: The Gathering game. What's noteworthy is that the game-playing itself is free. You pay instead to buy the cards you will be allowed to use online. As with the paper version of the game, you buy a new pack of cards sight unseen: might be good, might be lame, although usually there are a few rare ones spiced into every deck, enough to keep you hungry.
        If you collect a full set (I'm not sure how many cards in a set), you can exchange the electronic cards for paper ones. Even without this feature, there's real money flowing through this game, all without a subscription. Captured or bought cards could be sold, and if you cash out while others still like the game, you could conceivably make some money of your own. (The house always wins, I know.) I think there's more of a market here than in Everquest swords too, because Magic cards have hundreds of different rules and quirks, whereas RPG items typically have only a few stats to modify. That diversity will make the rare cards more precious.
        Wizards of the Coast is leaving the actual sales-infrastructure to eBay and PayPal, saving themselves the world of trouble that comes with such transactions. That's too bad for players though. I'd feel more confident about paying someone $10 for a card, if the exchange of card and money happened at the same time.
        The terse straightforwardness of the FAQ makes me laugh, although they do have this one sly answer: "Q: Can I play against the computer? A: No. Just like in paper-based Magic, you need another real player to have any sense of victory or defeat." Hey, you don't know that! Maybe I'm a shallow weiner who cheats at solitaire.
        Penny Arcade has a series of further links for those of you yawning "old news, old news."

What causes crazes?     Thursday, January 31, 2002
The Edge gathering of scientists, philosophers and other thinkers asked their own questions this year, rather than answering a single question. The result was a disorganized pot of pet projects, but I did like this one response which asked if there were some common links between fads, crazes and financial manias, and then takes the time to explore the idea a little. The author, to my delight, was not a professor or a new-economy CEO, but actor Alan Alda.

Unst Bus Shelter     Thursday, January 31, 2002
A bus shelter on a small British island that has a sofa, potted flowers, and a hot snacks counter, which the host describes this way: "The snacks that you find in the Bus Shelter aren’t five years old and made by some nitwit oh no these snacks are of my mum's fair hands and boy is she a good cook. As you can find out if you go to the little house at the end of the road!!" Luverly.

Peter Gzowski, 1934-2002     Thursday, January 24, 2002
Oh. A piece of the country is missing. Now I'll never have the chance to be interviewed by Peter Gzowski, and all Canadians should have had that chance. I'll have to start up a Canada in the next world. Lots of Tim Hortons.

Playing for keeps: Entropia     Thursday, January 24, 2002
An online role-playing game that has no monthly fee, but which allows you to buy game-dollars with real money, and then change game-dollars back into real money again. It's a casino with monsters!
        I read a short story about this concept in Dragon Magazine when I was a teenager. Man, I still own that magazine too, unless my mom has burned it for warmth or something.
        The security requirements for this game would be unreal. Diablo 2 just suffered a massive exploit this past weekend that collapsed its online economy, and Blizzard has been fighting cheating since Univac. Real world problems like money laundering and fraud won't be far behind either. I think there's a real business plan here, but the logistics are brutal. They're going to need some sign-up contract like "we don't have to pay you if we don't feel like it." All the same: cooool.
        I remember reading that Richard Garriot was working on a similar idea, before he started porting that Korean phenomenon, Lineage. I hope other are working on similiar projects too, because nothing on the Project Entropia web site makes me think I'd enjoy the game as much as the business model.
        [Update: Slashdot added a full story about Entropia. Someone claiming to have worked on the game says no one will ever play it. Someone else suspects a scam.]

The secret myths of homeless children     Friday, January 18, 2002
This 1997 magazine story is one of those perfect haunting pieces that reads like fiction -- and probably is. I couldn't get through it without thinking hoax. Google says nothing of the kind though, except to report that Disney bought the screenplay.

Be that way     Friday, January 18, 2002
Farmers block a proposed national wildlife refuge near them, so the landowner turns around and instead sells the land to a company that will use it for manure lagoons.

Word of Mouth     Friday, January 18, 2002
Claire Berlinski's novel, Loose Lips, is about a woman whose dissertation has been turned down by nine university presses ("Dialectic of Manjusri: Monasteries and Social Welfare in Northeastern India, 600-800 AD"). She stumbles out of academia into a life with the CIA.
        The novel doesn't have an English publisher, so she's published the first chapter herself on the web. Not unusual. Here's the clever bit that distinguishes her from other self-publishers I've seen: she'll send you the rest of the novel in exchange for a PayPal donation of any amount (she recommends just under $6) or a link to her site. (Look, a monkey!)
        I think she's made exactly the right calculation here for a new writer: on the Internet, you'll become famous fifty times before you become rich, so why not aim for famous first?
        The first chapter reminded me of those Tom Clany's Op Center books, none of which I finished. If I see the rest of this novel, it will have a distinct advantage over other books: I can read it while sitting at work.

Space Preservation Act of 2001     Wednesday, January 16, 2002
American Rep. Dennis Kucinich has introduced a bill which would outlaw orbital mind control lasers. The bill's odds of becoming law are low. Once it was introduced, the rest of Congress said in unison: "Mind control lasers are a paranoid figment. Resume your normal human activities. Representative Kucinich, may we speak with you a moment?" Then Congress ate him.

Murder at the Casablanca Lounge     Tuesday, January 15, 2002
The latest addition to Lileks's unmatched-anywhere-in-history collection of retro photos. This sequence comes from a 1940s trial of the century.

Intel's concept computers     Saturday, January 12, 2002
Intel's gallery of cool concepts PCs uses Flash for no good reason, but it's worth a look anyway. The Groom Lake computer resembles a jet pack. The Sasha system looks like Diablo's soulstone was plunged into it and the beast is escaping. UniMod looks like HAL, but apparently has no fans. Testimonial: I would buy a fanless computer even if it kept killing my friends in cryosleep. The Bonsai appears to have an actual plant in it. Pi Casa comes with a foot massager. The spiky backports of Ikebana and Titan are exciting, alien and impractical. But they would also need tentacles to keep away children and cats. (Then again, what doesn't?) Finally, the designers of the Tetra system say: "Playing games is even more fun when your computer is playful itself." A clarification: this is not true.

Written By - Boyens, Jackson and Walsh     Wednesday, January 9, 2002
The Writer's Guild of America's magazine "Written By" talks to the screenwriters of the wonderful Lord of the Rings. The sidebar made me want to start writing in a pub. At the end of the article, Boyens describes the price she paid for spending all these years writing this screenplay, her first. She also names her next adaptation: The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K. LeGuin.

Kobolds Ate My Baby!     Thursday, January 3, 2002
After receiving eight new games for Christmas and my birthday, there's not much room in the toy chest for another one, but I love the name of this silly-sounding "beer and pretzels" RPG. (Which eight games? Dvonn, Save Doctor Lucky, Battle Lines, The Great Brain Robbery, Torres, Lord of the Rings, Citadels, and Princes of Florence.)

CMA's Do Not Contact list     Thursday, January 3, 2002
An opt-out form for junk postal mail from the Canadian Marketing Association. I haven't tried it yet, so don't blame me if it's a front for the Unpasteurized Cheese of the Month club or something. Found on Marginalia.

Terrorism's memos     Thursday, January 3, 2002
An Al Qaeda computer is found by journalists in Kabul, full of letters, plans, funding complaints, and a sign that the computer owner made for his door in which he forgets about all the careful pseudonymity and uses his real name.

Crazy Apple Rumours     Thursday, January 3, 2002
Many Apple fans live like millenarian cultists, eternally waiting and dreaming of the stylish, fanless, intuitive utopia to come. Crazy Apple Rumours captures this spirit and at the same time removes the middleman that holds back other rumour sites. They make their own rumours up. (Oooh. They updated. This rumour is even better.)

Is the world a simulation?     Thursday, December 27, 2001
If it's possible to simulate an entire world in a computer, then it's unlikely we'll be the first civilization to do so and therefore are probably simulations ourselves. To read a Yale philosopher's 3,285 word version of that argument, follow the link above. The one angle Bostrom doesn't explore is whether this argument has an effect on solipsism. If you're simulating a whole world, do you keep all the minds running at the same time or do you cheat and just provide consciousness to the ones who interest you, say, weblog writers with undergrad philosophy degrees?

Previously on Mooselessness     Thursday, December 27, 2001
Just before Christmas Eve, when my cable modem burst into imaginary flames, I linked to a list of clever come-backs that the DNC chair could have used on George W. Bush, a man who could likely have him killed. You can also view the full Mooselessness archives.